RECOMMENDED BOOKS

Kay Caball’s The Kerry Girls: Emigration & the Earl Grey Scheme is the true story of 117 teenage girls sent out to Australia in 1849-1850 from workhouses in Kerry, under the auspices of the Earl Grey ‘Orphan’ scheme. It tells of their selection and transportation to New South Wales and Adelaide, and their subsequent attempts to rebuild a life far from home.

Breda Joy’s Hidden Kerry takes the reader on the less-travelled paths of the Kingdom, and is peopled with a varied cast of characters with colourful stories.

Wordsworth found fault with ‘the heavy shape of the highest hill, Mangerton’ when he climbed the mountain at the age of 59.

Shelley, writing from Italy in 1818, stated that Lake Como,‘exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the arbutus islands of Killarney’.

Local Mike O’Sullivan has written of the visiting Romantics in detail in the excellent reference book, ‘Killarney: History and Heritage’ (The Collins Press, 2005) The poets are part of a rich and varied body of luminaries from the world of

‘The Four Kerry Poets’, Aodhagán Ó Rathaille, Seáfraidh Ó Donnchadha, Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin and Piaras Feirtéar, are commemorated by the Spéir Bhean sculpture opposite the Franciscan Friary.

The ink is still coursing through the town today. The bookshelves feature Eileen Sheehan, Margaret O’Shea, Meg McCarthy, Mary O’Gorman, Donal Hickey, Colm Cooper, Weeshie Fogarty, Colin O’Sullivan and moi, while many Killarney journalists feature locally and nationally.

by Breda Joy

Nik Hall’s book of stunning photographs, Beautiful Killarney: A Walk Through the National Park, is a chronicle of a walk from Killarney town to Ladies View. It would make a wonderful memento for visitors to the town.

The lavishly illustrated Killarney: History & Heritage traces Killarney’s history through a series of specially-commis sioned essays. An enjoyable, informative read for the general and more serious reader alike.

How can a town the size of Killarney produce not one, but two Oscar-nominated actors and Hollywood A-listers?

Both Jessie Buckley and Michael Fassbender call Killarney home.

Jessie grew up just outside the town in Muckross, while Fassbender hails from the village of Fossa, the first stop on the famed Ring of Kerry tourist route.

Their careers have taken similar paths but they have yet to appear on the silver screen in the same movie.

Buckley began her career in 2008 as a contestant on the BBC TV talent show ‘I’d Do Anything’, in which she came in second place. She made her film debut in 2017 as Moll Huntford in the psychological thriller ‘Beast’. Later the same year she starred in the Country Music film ‘Wild Rose’, but her big success story came in 2021.

Buckley starred as the younger version of Leda Caruso in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Lost Daughter’ and this is what earned her her first Oscar nomination.

Her Hollywood career is only starting according to those who know her best.

Orna Cleary of Killarney Musical Society, who nurtured a young Jessie as a child actor in Killarney, said she is “only in the infancy of her career”.

“She has a massive road ahead of her,” Orna says.

“It is only the beginning. I believe she is still in the early part of her career. Look at what she has achieved in the last four or five years, the movies she has starred in, the people she has performed with, she is only in the infancy of her journey.”

Fassbender made his feature film debut as a Spartan warrior in the fantasy war epic ‘300’ in 2006.